Call After Midnight

by Tess Gerritsen

  Kronen was smiling. Sarah shuddered as he reached down and playfully ran a strand of her hair through his fingers. “Yes,” he said softly. “I know how….” Suddenly his body went rigid, and his jaw snapped up.

  Somewhere in the building, an alarm had gone off. Over the door a red light blinked on the warning panel.

  “Someone is inside!” said Kronen.

  Magus’s eyes were bright as diamonds. “It’s Dance,” he said. “It must be Dance….”

  Kronen already had his gun drawn as they ran from the room. The door slammed shut. The bolt squealed into place. Sarah was left alone, her eyes fixed on the red warning light flashing on and off.

  The effect was hypnotic. Red, the universal color of alarm, the color of blood, the color of fear, went on blinking. You are going to die, it screamed at her. In two days you are going to die.

  Just moments ago she had accepted her own death calmly. Now fear was pumping adrenaline by the quart into her veins. She wanted to live! In panic she lunged at the door, but it was made of solid oak and impossibly strong. Two days, her brain kept repeating. Two days, and then she’d feel Kronen’s knife. The way Eve had felt it. But Sarah couldn’t let herself think that far ahead. If she did she’d go mad with terror.

  The light was still flashing. It seemed to blink faster and faster, accelerating with the pounding of her heart.

  She fell back against the door and stared around the room. In their haste to leave, Kronen and Magus had left the lights on. For the first time, she examined her surroundings.

  The storeroom was not empty. Cardboard boxes, stamped with F. Berkman, were piled in a corner. She turned first to the boxes and found only a wrinkled invoice, made out in Dutch. Then she spotted a band of strapping tape around the largest box. She tore off the tape and pulled it taut a few times, testing its strength. Used right, it could easily strangle a man. She didn’t know if she had the power—or the nerve—to do it. But in her current situation, any weapon—even four feet of old tape—was a gift from heaven.

  Next she examined the window. Immediately she discarded it as an escape route. She’d never fit through.

  There was only one way out of the room: the door. But how was she to get out?

  The stacking chairs gave her an idea. A single chair was light enough to lift and swing. Good. One more weapon. Stacked together, the chairs were so heavy she could barely drag them across the floor. Her plan just might work.

  She tugged the stack of chairs to one side of the doorway and tied the strapping tape to a leg of the bottom chair. She strung out the tape and crouched on the opposite side of the doorway. She pulled her end of the tape. It rose a few inches off the floor. If her timing was right, it would work as a trip wire. It would buy her a few seconds, enough time to get through the door.

  Over and over she rehearsed her moves. Then she ran through everything with her eyes closed, until she could do it blind. It had to work; it was her only chance.

  She was ready. She climbed onto one of the chairs and disconnected the fluorescent light tubes in the ceiling. The room was plunged into darkness. It would be to her advantage; she now knew her way around the room in the darkness. As she was jumping off the chair, she heard what sounded like thunder. It was gunfire echoing off the buildings. Outside there were shouts, then more gunfire. The building was in an uproar. In all the confusion, her escape would be easier.

  First she had to draw someone’s attention. She took a chair to the window. At the count of three, she swung. The chair shattered the glass.

  She heard another shout, then footsteps pounding up the stairs. She brought the chair to the doorway and groped in the darkness for her end of the tape. Where was it?

  The footsteps had reached the next room and were crossing to her door. The bolt squealed. Desperately her fingers swept across the floor and came up with the tape just as the door swung open. A man lunged into the room, moving so fast she barely had time to react. She jerked on the tape. It snagged the man by the foot. His momentum almost wrenched the tape out of her hand. Something clattered across the floor. The man pitched forward and fell flat on his belly. At once he scrambled to his knees and started to rise.

  Sarah didn’t let him. She swung the chair, slamming it on his head. She felt, more than heard, the heavy thud against his skull, and the horror of what she’d done made her drop the chair.

  He wasn’t moving. But as she rummaged through his pockets, he began to moan, a low, terrible sound of agony. So she hadn’t killed him. She found no gun in his pockets. Had he dropped it? There was no time to search the dark room on her hands and knees. Better to run while she could.

  She fled the storeroom and bolted the door behind her. One down, she thought with a raw sense of satisfaction. How many more to go?

  Now to find her way out of the building. Three flights of stairs and then a front entrance. Could she slip through it all without being seen? No time to think, no time to plan. Every nerve, every muscle, was focused on this last dash for freedom. She was nothing but reflexes now, an animal, moving on instinct.

  She dashed through the office and started down the stairs. But a few steps into her descent, she froze. Voices rose from below. They were growing louder. Kronen was climbing the steps—her only escape route was cut off.

  She scrambled into the office and closed and bolted the door. Unlike the other door, it was not solid wood. It would hold them off for only a few minutes, no longer. She had to find another way out.

  The storeroom was a dead end. But in the office, above the desk, there was a window….

  She climbed up on the desk and peered out. All she could see was mist, swirling in the darkness. She tugged at the sash, but it wouldn’t budge. Only then did she see that the window had been nailed shut. For security, no doubt. She’d have to break the glass.

  Clutching the sash for support, she kicked. The first three tries were worthless; her heel bounced harmlessly off the glass. But on the fourth kick, the window shattered. Shards flew out and rained onto the tiles below. Cold air hit her face. Peering outside, she saw she was at a gable window. A few feet down was a steeply tiled roof that dropped off into darkness. What lay below? It could be a deadly three story fall to the street, or it could slope down to an adjacent roof. In the older blocks of Amsterdam, she’d seen how the buildings were crammed side by side, the roofs running in an almost continuous line. In this mist she had no way of knowing what the darkness hid. Only a fall would tell her….

  The tiles would be slippery. She’d be better off barefoot. She bent down and pulled off her shoes. With sudden alarm she noticed the blood on her ankle. Her brain registered no pain; all it noted was the brightness of the blood as it oozed steadily down her foot. Even as she stared at it, mesmerized, she was aware of new noises: Kronen’s pounding on the office door, and from the storeroom the loud moans of the man she’d knocked unconscious.

  Time was running out.

  She stepped through the window, onto the sill. Her dress caught on a shard of broken glass; with a desperate jerk, she ripped the fabric free. For a few seconds she clung by one hand to the sash and groped for another handhold, for some way to pull herself up over the gable. But the roof was too high, and the eaves hung too far out. She was trapped.

  The sound of splintering wood forced her to act. Her choice was simple now. A quick death or a painful one. To fall into the darkness, to feel a split second of terror and then to feel nothing at all, would be infinitely better than to die at Kronen’s hands. She could stand the thought of dying. Pain was another matter.

  She heard the door give way, followed by Kronen’s shout of rage. With that shout ringing in her ears, she dropped from the window.

  She landed on a roof a few feet below and began sliding helplessly down the tiles. There was nothing to grab on to, nothing to stop her descent. The tiles were too wet; she felt them slipping away beneath her clawing fingers. Her legs dropped over the edge. For an instant she clung to the roof gutter, her feet dangli
ng uselessly. The night sky swirled with mist above her, a sky more beautiful than any she had seen, because it was her last. Her numb fingers could hold on no longer. The gutter slipped from her grasp. Eternity rushed toward her from the darkness.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “IT’S ONLY A flesh wound.”

  “Get back in that bed, O’Hara!” barked Potter.

  Nick stalked across his hospital room and flung the closet door open. It was empty. “Where’s my damn shirt?”

  “You can’t walk out of here—you’ve lost too much blood.”

  “My shirt, Potter.”

  “In the garbage. You bled all over it, remember?”

  Cursing, Nick wriggled out of his hospital top and glanced down at the bandages on his left shoulder. The pain shot they’d given him in the emergency room was wearing off. He was starting to feel as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to his upper torso. But he couldn’t lie around here waiting for something to happen. Too many precious hours had already slipped away.

  “Look,” said Potter, “why don’t you just lie down and let me handle things?”

  Nick turned on him in fury. “You mean like you’ve handled everything else?”

  “And what the hell good are you gonna do her out there? Tell me that.”

  Nick turned away, grief suddenly replacing his anger. He slammed his fist against the wall. “I had her, Roy! I had her in my arms….”

  “We’ll find her.”

  “Like you found Eve Fontaine?” Nick shot back.

  Potter’s face tightened. “No. No, I hope not.”

  “Then what are you doing about it?” cried Nick.

  “We’re still waiting for that guy you knocked out to start talking. All we’ve gotten out of him so far is gibberish. And we’re tracking down that other lead, the Berkman company.”

  “Search the building!”

  “Can’t. We need Van Dam’s go-ahead and we can’t reach him. We also need more evidence—”

  “Screw the evidence,” muttered Nick, turning toward the door.

  “Where you going?”

  “To do some breaking and entering.”

  “O’Hara, you can’t go there without backup!” He followed Nick into the corridor.

  “I’ve seen your backup. I think I’d rather have a gun.”

  “You know how to shoot one?”

  “I learn real fast.”

  “Look, let me clear this through Van Dam—”

  “Van Dam?” Nick snorted. “That guy wouldn’t clear a trip to the john!” He punched the elevator button, then glanced at Potter’s clothes. “Give me your shirt.”

  “What?”

  “Breaking and entering’s bad enough. I don’t need a charge of indecent exposure.”

  “You’re nuts! I’m not giving you my shirt. I’ll get it back full of bullet holes.”

  Nick hit the elevator button again. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  The elevator doors suddenly whished open. Potter looked up in annoyance as agent Tarasoff stepped out. “Sir?” said Tarasoff. “We’ve got a new development.”

  “Now what?”

  “Just came over the police radio. There’s been a report of gunfire. The Berkman building.”

  Nick and Potter stared at each other.

  “Gunfire!” said Nick. “My God. Sarah…”

  “Where’s Van Dam?” Potter snapped.

  “I don’t know, sir. He still doesn’t answer his hotel phone.”

  “That’s it. Let’s go, O’Hara!” As the three men rode the elevator down to street level, Potter muttered to Nick, “I don’t know why I should put my career on the line for you. I don’t even like you. But you’re right. We’ve gotta move in now. By the time Van Dam gives the okay, we’ll all be in a damned nursing home.” He glanced sharply at Tarasoff. “And that comment’s off the record. You got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Potter suddenly eyed Tarasoff’s build. “What size are you?”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Shirt size.”

  “Uh…sixteen.”

  “That’ll do. Lend your shirt to Mr. O’Hara here. I’m sick of looking at his hairy chest. Don’t worry, I’ll see he doesn’t get blood all over it.”

  Tarasoff immediately complied, but he looked distinctly ill at ease in his undershirt and jacket. They headed for the parking garage.

  “Get on the radio and have the team meet us at the Berkman building.”

  “Shall I keep trying to get hold of Van Dam?”

  Potter hesitated as he caught Nick’s glance of warning. “No,” he said at last. “For now, let’s keep this our own little secret.”

  Tarasoff gave him a puzzled look as he opened the car door. “Yes, sir.”

  Nick slid into the back seat. “You know, Potter,” he said, easing into Tarasoff’s shirt, “maybe you’re not as dumb as I thought.”

  Potter shook his head grimly. “On the other hand, O’Hara, maybe I am,” he said. “Maybe I am.”

  * * *

  WITH A HOLLOW thud, Sarah landed on her back.

  The first thing she felt was wonderment. She was alive. By God, she was alive! For what seemed like hours, she lay there in the darkness, the breath knocked out of her, the sky spinning. Then she saw the gable window, not more than fifteen feet above her, and she realized she had fallen only a short distance. She was lying on an adjacent rooftop.

  Kronen’s shouts jolted her into action. He was standing above at the window, barking out commands. From somewhere in the darkness below, other voices responded. His men were searching the ground for her body. They wouldn’t find it. Soon they’d turn their attention to the rooftop.

  She scrambled to her feet. Already her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. She could discern the faint outline of roof against sky. Then it suddenly struck her that it wasn’t just her eyes; the sky had lightened. The difference was almost imperceptible; the significance was frightening. Dawn was coming. In minutes she’d be an easy target, scurrying across the tiles. Before the sun rose, she had to make her way to safety.

  Flashlight beams streaked below. Footsteps circled the building, and then the men shouted again. They had not found her body.

  Sarah was already crawling up the next slope of tiles. The angle was shallow, and she easily reached the apex. She slipped over the top and eased her way down toward the next roof. The mist seemed to close around her in a thick, protective veil. Her dress was soaked from the wet tiles, and the satin clung to her like a freezing second skin. Her bare feet scraped across mortar, which rubbed them raw, but the cold had numbed them so completely she felt no pain. Terror had robbed her of every distraction; the unrelenting awareness of her own death blocked everything else from her mind.

  She slid off the tiles onto a flat gravel surface and ran through the lifting darkness to a rooftop door. The knob was ice-cold. The door was locked. She beat it with her fists, beat it until her hands were bruised and she was weak and sobbing. The door did not open. Whirling around, she looked for another escape route—another door, a stairway. With every second the sky brightened. She had to get off this roof! Then a man’s far-off shout told her she’d already been spotted.

  The next roof loomed before her, a sheer wall of slate. Except for a gable window far above and an antenna at the top, the surface was smooth as ice. She could never climb it.

  The shouts came again, closer. A loose tile clattered from the roof and smashed to the sidewalk. She spun around and saw Kronen lowering himself out the broken gable window. He was coming after her.

  Like a trapped bird, she circled her rooftop cage, searching desperately for a way off. At the rear of the building, there was only a sheer drop to an alley. She dashed to the other side and stared down. Far below, through fingers of mist, she saw the street. There were no balconies, no stairways, to break her fall if she jumped. There was only the wet pavement, waiting to receive her body.

  She heard something clatter across the tiles.
Kronen cursed; his gun had fallen to the street. He was already over the top of the second roof. In seconds he’d be on her.

  Her eyes darted back to the smooth slate roof, an impassable barrier between her and safety. Staring up, she felt a cold drizzle descend on her face and mingle with her tears. If only I could fly! she thought. If only I could soar away! Then, through her tears, she sighted a black wire running down the roof from the antenna. Was it strong enough to support her weight? If it broke she might tumble over the edge to the street.

  The sound of Kronen’s feet hitting the gravel rooftop tore away her last threads of hesitation. Reaching for the wire, she dragged herself up the slate roof. Her toes slid down a few inches, then held. As footsteps crunched across the gravel toward her, she clambered up the roof, out of Kronen’s reach.

  His curse echoed off the buildings. She didn’t dare look back to see if he was following. Every ounce of her concentration was focused ahead, on the soaring surface of gray slate. Her fingers ached. Her feet were raw and swollen. The roof seemed to rise forever; at any moment she expected to hear gunfire from Kronen’s men on the ground below, to feel a bullet slam into her back. All she heard was the wind and Kronen’s angry shouts. Even without his gun, he could easily kill her. A toss of his knife would send her hurtling to the street. But she knew that Magus wanted her alive. For now.

  She kept moving, unable to see her goal, unable to judge how much farther she had to climb. Surely it couldn’t be far! she thought desperately. She couldn’t hold on much longer.

  Her feet gave way beneath her. With a cry she felt her legs swing free. Gravity was pulling her relentlessly downward, an unshakable force she couldn’t fight. Her arms were exhausted. As she struggled for a foothold, her right calf twisted into a cramp. She felt the wire slipping through her hands. Then, nudged aside by a sudden breath of wind, the mist faded and she saw, only inches away, the top of the roof.

  Somehow she found the strength to drag herself upward. At last her fingers closed around the antenna. The metal felt so solid, so strong! She pulled herself those last few inches to the top. There she collapsed against the hard angle of slate, her arms hugging the sides of the roof. She had to rest, just for a few seconds. She had to let the cramp ease from her calf.